1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an information output apparatus of the type which is responsive to digitally coded input data to output (the term "output" used herein refers to the display on the screen and to the record on the recording medium) characters or any pattern corresponding to the coded data (hereinafter referred to "characters"), and more particularly to an information output apparatus in which the character display style, namely, the size, interval, display position and style of characters are of a variety and flexibility.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The information output apparatus of this type are becoming more and more important as a circumferential or terminal apparatus of the data processing equipment for computers or the like, and it is often required that the code data in the processing equipment be converted into forms which man can recognize, for example, the form of characters or the like. As an example of the information output device which satisfies such requirement, there has been used impact printing apparatus, such as line printer, which selects a character or other embossed mark corresponding to the input of character code and impacts a printable medium to accomplish printing. One of the disadvantages peculiar to such type of printing apparatus is that the diversity of the character display style is seriously limited, namely, that the number of character pieces in the printing apparatus is physically limited and replacement of character types with other selected sets of character pieces requires much time for which the printing operation must be interrupted.
Another disadvantage of the impact printer is that the character code applied as input and the character pieces in the printing apparatus normally have a construction corresponding to 1:1, so that the flexibility of the relation between the character codes and the printed characters is limited.
Also known is the non-impact information output apparatus is an ink jet type printing apparatus, but in this type of apparatus the above-noted limitations are not completely eliminated.